2- and on the topic of energy, do energy collectors refill the "gas tank" of a ship or would they just help power things while the ship is stationary, obviously useful on star bases that do not move but ambiguous use of ships.

3- and on the topic of "gas" or fuel capacity why would an immobile star base need fuel capacity at all since it has no range?

2)Energy collectors only kick in when the ship is stationary and they are generally recommended to reduce fuel consumption especially on military ships so that they won't need constant refuelling. They can be used or fuel production with an energy to fuel converter.

3) Fuel on bases is needed to power the reactor in emergencies as usually the collectors don't generate enough energy to power the weapons.

2) Energy collectors on military ships are generally useless unless they have a lot of components that have large static energy requirements like fighter bays. The only thing that has static energy use in most military ships are life support and hab I think, which is generally negligible.

ahh so fuel powers the reactors that inturn power the weapons. so fuel not only dictates range but the use of weapns which when used will cause a decrease in range due to power usage which is genearted by fuel consumption.

Rule #1, Components use energy from your energy storage, so that needs to be at least a little bigger as your weapons+shield recharge, or all your weapons will not fire at once, on a ship, power used in cruise speed needs to be added as well

On a mobile ship, this energy storage is only ever replenished using your fuel reactor, which uses X amount of fuel per unit of energy it gives you

On a stationary ship or base, the game will first replenish energy stores using any energy collectors on board, if the usage hasn't been covered, it will then kick back over to the reactor to fill the rest

Rule of thumb I (and many others) use is, on ships you have enough collectors to cover static energy, then make sure you have enough excess energy output from reactors to cover weapons+shield recharging+cruise speed while keeping to rule #1 above concerning energy storage

On a base however, you can run your base on collectors alone, have the collector energy higher than the energy/second used by weapons, shield recharge and static energy After ensuring rule #1 is followed, if you have negative excess output, you need more energy collectors to cover that as well This will then mean a base never has to use it's fuel unless energy collectors get taken offline through combat Downside is that it'll be more expensive

Of course, collectors advice goes completed out of the window in deepspace as they don't work, meaning you'll use reactors full stop

Hope that helps, and I'm sure this is still right and it hasn't changed since some of us worked this out years back